1. bright. Intelligent,intellectual describe distinctive mental capacity. Intelligent often suggests a natural quickness of understanding: an intelligent reader.Intellectual implies not only having a high degree of understanding, but also a capacity and taste for the higher forms of knowledge: intellectual interests.2. astute, clever, alert, bright, apt, discerning, shrewd, smart. See sharp.

intelligent

adj.

c.1500, a back-formation from intelligence or else from Latin intelligentem (nominative intelligens), present participle of intelligere, earlier intellegere (see intelligence). Intelligent design, as a name for an alternative to atheistic cosmology and the theory of evolution, is from 1999. Related: Intelligently.